Thursday, October 21, 2010

Today...I Should Be Censored

I'm over being pregnant. If there was a way to just walk into the hospital in February and pick my baby up and take him home, I would really prefer that. Actually, while I'm fantasizing, I'd sort of rather visit the Cabbage Patch and walk along rows of cute baby heads popping out of cabbage sprouts and pluck my baby from the ground, have tea with Xavier Roberts before he tattoos his name on my baby's cloth butt and head home with little Carnegie Steven. That's a happy little picture, isn't it? It certainly was when I was six and Cabbage Patch Kids were the best thing in life. Back then, they just showed up at Christmas in a weird shaped box with a birth certificate sporting the ugliest name possible...and that's where babies came from. Also, when said babies began to imaginary cry, you could just set them aside and move on to Legos.

But why should I complain? I had the luxury of sleeping through the night last night for the first time in months after all. Shouldn't I feel spoiled? Well, I don't. I am overwhelmed and unexcited, and the unexcited part has led to guilt, which makes me a little depressed and this week is just not fun. Not that I even know what fun is anymore. Fun used to be buying little presents to myself or redecorating my bedroom for no reason. Fun was meeting a friend for happy hour after a long day at work or having sushi for lunch three times in one week just because it's so yummy. Fun was running at Arbor Hills and making it all the way up the big hills without walking - then getting to watch the numbers on the scale go down, along with my pant size. THAT was fun. And that was forever ago, it seems like.

Now my body belongs to someone else and I can't do a single thing without thinking about how it will affect him. Welcome to motherhood, yes I know. At least when he's here I'll be able to take a break every now and then. Right now, I'm just watching all that weight I was so worried about not gaining in the beginning deliver itself to my doorstep (the back door, naturally) on a daily basis. Ounces a day that add up to pounds so quickly that if I did the math, I'd probably weigh around 324 pounds by the time the baby is born. I'm worrying about money every moment of every day and feeling the weight of birthday gifts, baby shower gifts, wedding gifts and Christmas gifts resting on my shoulders for weeks and weeks to come. Not to mention the huge increase in my own expenses I have to look forward to. I am drinking a cup of coffee every morning and then feeling guilty because I'm probably turning my baby into a hyper-active caffeine addicted midget from what the books say, even though I'm staying below the limit. What the books say...I've stopped reading the books. The books are evil as far as I'm concerned. There should be a book out there that, start to finish, just tells people what a load of crap all the other books are, and that they should be shelved in a section called, "How To Lose Your Mind Before The Hormones Make You Lose It Anyway." I knew I should have bought the one called Pregnancy Sucks.

So today is going to be a blast, I just know it. It's ShoveBabiesDownMyThroatDay, apparently. Soon, I leave for a doctor appointment, where I am looking forward to the startled look on her face when she sees my new scale number. Then I get to swing by BuyBuy Baby for a last minute baby shower gift for a co-worker that I will get back to the office just in time for. This is a true testament of my planning skills lately. Once that's over, the work day will be too, and I'll be heading to Babies R Us to meet a friend so she can help me with my mess of a registry and hopefully calm me down and tell me how worth it all of this is. She better be reading this before then, she has a lot of work ahead of her.

Keep your fingers crossed for another mood swing, by the way. We're hoping it swings the other way next time.

Okay, so you actually think you're the first person to have these thoughts? Love, you are part of a special love-hate club that will last for the rest of your life. Just remember, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. You will need that for the teenage years especially.

And that's still MY baby, BTW. You can just drop him off here any time you've had enough. I've got your back.